Inserts mix in some variety for collectors, with several sets to build. The new Baseball America Dean's List cards rely on the esteemed magazine to assess the young stars in the league with a letter grade. Also debuting, 1997 Best Cuts uses the '97 design and Raking Rookies features the top-hitting first-year players. A carryover insert, the Mirror Image set again pairs two subjects on one card.

Parallels extend to the inserts, as well, with case-hit Atomic Refractor to go with numbered Gold Refractor and one-of-one SuperFractor cards. All the inserts except Mirror Image also have low-numbered Autograph versions.

2017 Bowman's Best Baseball Autographs

Combining to fall four per master box, the signed lineup in 2017 Bowman's Best Baseball is led by the primary Best of 2017 Autographs set. Parallels provide a rainbow chase with Refractor and serial numbered Green Refractor, Gold Refractor, Atomic Refractor (#/25), Red Refractor (#/10) and SuperFractor (1/1) cards.

Dual Autographs doubles up the Bowman fun with on-card signatures and even Atomic Refractor (#/10) and SuperFractor (1/1) parallels. Lastly, there is the new Monochrome Autograph set that highlights first-round picks as well as star players with hard-signed cards. Parallels here include Gold Refractor (#'d), Atomic Refractor (#/25) and SuperFractor (1/1).

2017 Bowman’s Best Baseball Product Review

Bad: Not the greatest overall team representation as far as autographs; sticker autographs for most inserts.

The Bottom Line:Starting to feel like Finest 2.0, but for prospects, 2017 Bowman’s Best Baseball is still an interesting option from the Bowman lineup. With four autographs per box (and likely all will be hard-signed), the appeal extends beyond prospect collectors as rookies, current stars and a few retired legends are also featured.

Staff Rating:

4.0 / 5.0

Card Design: 4.0/5.0

Clearly the base design goes a bit more fanciful, with various background shapes and patterns that all form one abstract mashup. While I do prefer it to the large team logo of 2016, it is certainly a busy design. Although color Refractors are again sparse, I didn't seem to notice as much this year given the colorful look of each card.

The autographs and inserts are generally more subdued, but this contrasts well, in my opinion. The main signed set, Best of 2017, has a lined, sloping effect that looks more like what I would have expected from the base set. These are signed on-card, and they look pretty good. The hard-signed Monochrome cards with a sepia-style scheme are even more impressive.

As far as the inserts, they are all solid, but I especially liked the 1997 throwback Best Cuts cards, complete with a pearl finish, and the vivid Raking Rookies set.

Checklist: 3.75/5.0

Skewing heavily to teams like the Red Sox and Yankees, the autograph choices in the 2017 Bowman’s Best Baseball checklist are fairly strong, but likely to disappoint many team collectors. Given how large the signers list is, you'd expect a little bit better distribution.

Although Bowman sets naturally focus on prospects, and come with the expected risks for that form of collecting, Bowman's Best does a good job rolling in rookies and established stars, as well. This is a plus for the checklist.

Value: 3.75/5.0

Priced at about $105-120 per master box, you get four autographs, which is a good haul. While the checklist is of course heavy on prospects, with multiple low-value subjects to go along with big names such as Acuna, Senzel and top 2017 draft picks, it's not all about hoping for the next young stud. Superstar players like Jeter, Trout, Harper and Bryant give an extra bump to the value potential, not to mention options for Hank Aaron and Aaron Judge, plus the low-numbered Refractor and SuperFractor parallels across the board.

In terms of what you get for your money, 2017 Bowman’s Best Baseball is nothing to look down on. The problem is that Bowman already has a frontrunner set, and this is not it. That does limit value, since the Bowman Chrome prospect autographs will always be the preferred option. Still, with a distinct design and on-card signature, these are a worthy option and perhaps a sleeper.

The Fun Factor: 4.5/5.0

This is the sort of set that really speaks to my personal collecting style. The designs are fairly unique with enough variety for me to feel satisfied by the contents of a box. And you also get four autographs that aren't exclusively prospects, although that is the most likely result. Combine that with a decent box price and a few cool inserts, and this leaves me quite pleased.

2017 Bowman's Best Baseball Cards, reviewed by Trey Treutel on 2018-01-05T15:15:28+00:00 rating 4.0 out of 5

Trey Treutel | E-Mail Author
Trey Treutel is an Ole Miss grad and a lifelong sports fanatic. He is a huge fan of the NBA and NFL, as well as soccer, college basketball and college football. As a kid, he collected football and basketball cards. In more recent years, he started collecting basketball cards again on a whim and has since expanded to other sports and entertainment options. Find Trey on Twitter at @datreute or Google+.

Question, why is Brendon Mckay the only player with 2 variations of Best of 2017 autographs? I have both and I realize that they are in 2 different uniforms but is that the only reason or is one more short printed than the other? Thanks

Have to agree with Mike V. above, the number of Yankee autos is staggering. Lol, at least in the 4 cases I watched being opened. But, still a great product with the on-card autos and the design. 4 Autos for about $100 is damn good. Don’t know why the market seems to under value Bowman’s Best.

Both of my boxes were short an auto and the autos I did get were dl hall (3 base autos), Ryan Mountcastle (2 base), and Tanner Houck. After Topps Tek over loaded me with Kyle Seager I have lost interest in cards for a while. Two Stars for design.

I really like this set of Bowman’s best cards. They are kind of on the artsy side but they are very nice looking cards in my opinion. The only thing I don’t really understand is the monochrome autos? Is that an on card Auto or some type of sticker Auto? Another thing I don’t fully understand is the best of 2017 autos, are those on card or sticker autos? Perhaps someone out there could help me out and explain this or maybe you could bring some information to light about the autos. This might be a good job for you Trey as you seem to know and have info about a lot of different baseball card sets. And I really appreciate the info and feedback I get from you. Overall I believe this is a great set and look forward to purchasing more. Thanks, Jim

Thanks very much for replying and answering my question about autographs on this sets cards. Here’s a good one for you or anyone else out there reading these write-ups on the cardboard connection. Someone should create a site or someone should somehow explain how to grade the centering of all these borderless cards. It sure would be a great help to know how to assess the centering of a card that has absolutely no borders on the front or back of card. This would be a good one for you Trey as you are very knowledgeable and helpful about baseball cards overall. Thanks very much, Jim

I like the look of the base set, but I think it would be better with another base card or two per pack. I bought a box worth of packs at a show yesterday, and have 30/100 cards for the set. Assuming perfect collation, I would need another two and a half boxes to finish the set. At $105-110 a box (the current rate here) it would be about $350-400 to complete a base set that I can buy for $30 online. It’s a fun product that I can’t talk myself into buying more of. On a side note, does McKay really have TWO monochrome autos,

Awesome product…waiting for public to realize that 1 of 25 is 1 of 25. Not sure why Bowman Chrome Autos are so much more valuable. I could understand if a BC pack was $10 and B.B. packs are $2. But the pack price is the same, so why are the autos, especially the numbered autos so undervalued?

This reply is for Delbert Lewis. Is the Judge redemption Raking Rookie a Refractor? If so, then the Gold Refractor would be numbered to /50. If it’s an Atomic Refractor then it’s not numbered.

Finally, if it was to be a SuperFractor it would be a 1 of 1. You didn’t say anything about it being an autograph either. Since it’s not an autograph then the value will not be as much as it would be if his name was signed on the card.